Stepping Down (10 page)

Sharla
had nearly passed out when Mark hinted at the woman’s name. Sharla knew exactly
who Bria Logan was. She was the woman who had given birth to Amani. The woman
who needed to let the past stay in the past and stop trying to ruin the life
Sharla had so carefully tried to secure. Even if it wasn’t her first
choice—which would have been to give birth to her own child—Sharla
had done a good job of making sure plan B ran smoothly. How dare Bria Logan try
to come and mess with the Carter family.

Sharla
wasn’t having it. Not now, not in a million years. Amani had expressed a desire
to see his “birth” family since the age of eight, but Sharla figured what the
boy didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Truth was, the Logans were an ungodly,
sheisty bunch with a history of alcoholism, repeated incarcerations, abuse,
poverty, and teenage pregnancies.

Sharla
knew all too well what it was like to grow up under those circumstances. She
was thankful that God had pulled her out of the vicious cycle. Even more
grateful to pull someone else out of it, particularly an African-American boy.
Maybe Sharla hadn’t done everything right when it came to adopting Amani, but
like the saying goes: You can’t unscramble eggs.

Sharla
stood in her bathroom mirror checking out her appearance. Rather, someone
else’s appearance. The short curly wig, ruby red lipstick and Bamboo earrings
were definitely not her style. And the dumpy denim button-down shirt with those
cotton pants that shouldn’t ever be worn in public, denied all sense of class.
She would fit right in with the type of around-the-way girls she imagined Bria
hung with.

She
grabbed her broadest, darkest pair of shades from the collection atop her
dresser and headed to the garage, then on to Ben Taub Hospital. After a bit of
online research, Sharla guessed Bria had been transported there because they
are a Level 1 Trauma care hospital. She couldn’t get any information by phone
about Bria’s condition other than the ambiguous one-word medical term:
critical.

Critical
didn’t tell Sharla what she needed to know. Would Bria live or die? If she
lived, would she retain her mental capacities? Most importantly, would she be
coherent enough to continue with her effort to butt back into Amani’s life?

There
really was no plan for this visit. Sharla wasn’t even sure what she would do
once she got there, but she needed to see Bria’s condition for herself. 
Beyond that, she wondered if Bria looked like Amani. How
much
did she
look like Amani? Did her other children look like Amani, too?

The
curiosity was eating Sharla alive. In previous years, she’d been almost
obsessed with Bria Logan, searching for her back in the MySpace days, looking
for her Facebook profile, Googling her name and image, all to no avail. Who was
this woman who had given birth to the son Sharla loved?

Sharla
stopped at the information desk and got the room number. Bria was still in ICU.

“Thank
you,” Sharla said, thanking God that hospitals were nothing like airports,
making sure everyone had official business before allowing them beyond the
perimeter.

 However,
when she reached the proper floor, she learned that she’d have to wait until
three o’clock to visit, nearly twenty minutes, because the nurses were changing
shifts. This unwelcomed news made Sharla uneasy.
What am I doing here?

Nonetheless,
she’d come this far. She had to see it through. She joined about fifteen people
in the ICU waiting room. Some looked as though they’d been camped out there
most of the day, with blankets and empty McDonald’s sacks scattered around
their campgrounds.

These
people were the
real
visitors. They had loved ones who were hanging in
life’s balance and, presumably, were gathered out of genuine concern. The
wall-mounted television blared an old
I Love Lucy
episode that always
made Sharla smile. But she knew these people in the waiting room probably
couldn’t have smiled if they wanted to.

Sharla
could almost feel the guilt pressing down on her trunk, causing her to sink
into one of the room’s cushioned seats. She grabbed a magazine to take her mind
off the situation, but there was no mistaking the idea that she should leave.

“You
get in touch with Bria’s job?” a lady in a purple maxi dress asked the elderly
man sitting next to her.

Sharla
nearly jumped at the mention of the name. She buried her face between an ad for
perfume on the left and one for lipstick on the right, her ears at full
attention.

He
answered, “Yeah, I told them. Didn’t you see the flowers the company sent her
up on the counter by the light switch?”

“Ooh,
that was nice. She works with some really good people,” a grandmotherly figure
commented.

Flowers?
The fact that Bria had a job was a shock
to Sharla—let alone a job that actually sent flowers to its sick
employees. The last time Sharla peeked into Bria’s life, the girl had been
failing drug tests; she couldn’t have gotten a decent job to save her life.

The
grandmother sat on a different sofa, which led Sharla to wonder just how much
space Bria’s relatives had taken up in the room. For all she knew, she could be
sitting next to Bria’s best friend.

Sharla
stole a glance at the woman who’d started the conversation. She was slender,
with a killer white Michael Kors bag and a natural nail manicure. Buffed. Not
quite the triple-acrylic, rhinestone-bearing claw nails Sharla had expected to
see on members of Bria’s entourage. 

“I
just hope we get to the bottom of this and the pastor does right by her,”
maxi-dress girl added.

 “Yeah,
me, too,” from Grandma. “Wonder why he didn’t swerve to hit
his
side of
the car instead of Bria’s. A man of God ought to sacrifice himself before
innocent people.”

Innocent?
According to Mark, Bria had taken it
upon herself to hop her happy behind in Mark’s vehicle. These people had it all
wrong!

Maxi-dress
woman wagged her finger. “All I know is, when Bria wakes up again, I’m going to
tell her to leave Boomie the heck alone forever. He is crazy. I hope they get
him, shootin’ all in people’s cars like a maniac.”

The
news of Bria having been conscious and possibly able to comprehend, stirred
Sharla in a way she hadn’t anticipated. For Amani’s sake, Sharla hoped she
would live. But for her own sake, Sharla wanted Bria to…well…not
die
,
but not pose a threat to her own stable life with Mark and Amani.

As
far as the courts were concerned, Bria had no right to have any part in Amani’s
life. After months in Sharla and Mark’s home as a foster child, they had fallen
in love with the baby and asked about adopting him even though the social
worker, Demetria, had told them from the beginning that Amani would probably be
returned to his mother. The father was unknown to everyone, including Bria. She
claimed to have narrowed the possibilities down to three men, but there was no
test conducted.

Bria
had been taking parenting classes and learning to be a good mother, supposedly.
But after the social worker discovered that she’d given the  six month old
a heavy dose of cold medicine to keep him knocked out while Bria went clubbing
during one of Amani’s weekend visits, the case changed dramatically. Bria was
charged with child endangerment and suddenly, the door to claim Amani as her
own forever cracked opened for Sharla.

Amani
celebrated his first birthday with the Carters. By that time, there was no way
on earth Sharla could give him back. She’d fallen hopelessly in love with the
baby, and it was obvious Amani had bonded with his new parents. She couldn’t
imagine that a court would jeopardize the good life she and Mark could provide.

The
only One who seemed to be oblivious was God. Sharla and Mark were also busy
trying to make a brother or sister for Amani, but Sharla’s body wasn’t
cooperating.

When
it was clear that Bria was in no position to get Amani back, some of her family
members tried to step forward and claim the baby. It was clear to Sharla, by
way of Demetria, who was more than sympathetic to Sharla by that point, that
the only reason they wanted to adopt Amani was because they would receive some
financial support from the state for having adopted him out of the foster care
system.

Both
Sharla and Mark had talked about how stupid it was to consider removing Amani
from their stable home to place him with the very people who’d raised Bria to
be an unfit mother.

With
Demetria’s help and a little work from a private detective, Sharla had put a
stop to all those endeavors. By that point, Amani was almost two. Bria had
cleaned up her act, or so she claimed, and wanted Amani back.

Sharla
wasn’t giving him up, and she blamed the court system for dragging the whole adoption
thing out so long. Ridiculous government bureaucracy. Sharla would move to
Mexico before giving up the only child she would ever have.

Right
or wrong, Sharla had done everything within her power to make sure Amani didn’t
return to his birth mother…by any means necessary.

After
reviewing the big picture as it pertained to Bria and Amani, Sharla didn’t feel
so guilty anymore. If anybody was wrong, it was Bria for having put them all in
that situation. At least that’s what Sharla had to keep telling herself in
order to hold her place in the waiting room.

“Has
anyone from her church been by here to check on her?” a teenager half-way
engrossed in her cell phone asked. Sharla noticed the exceptional quality of
the girl’s weave. Definitely not cheap. “She’s been going there for, like,
three weeks now, and she had even asked me to go so I could be part of this new
family she said she had in Christ.”

“Please,”
from Maxi-dress woman, “the church is what got her in this predicament to begin
with. The last thing she needs is somebody from her church coming by here. I
hope she sues that no-good pastor.”

No-good
pastor?
Sharla could
call Mark all kinds of ugly names in her head, but no one else had the right to
do so—especially not out loud! She tried to think of a way to butt into
their conversation, but nothing appropriate came to mind.

Unsure
of what or when to speak, Sharla kept her mouth shut. It was bad enough she was
snooping, worse to try to pick Bria’s family for information.

Speaking
of such, Sharla tapped the name “Boomie” in her phone’s notes. The police
seemed to be unsure of who had been chasing Mark and Bria, but obviously her
family knew. Maybe they were adhering to the unspoken no-snitch rules of the
hood in keeping this clue from the police, but Sharla didn’t have to play by
those rules anymore. She was going straight to Detective Rozanno with the
suspect’s name.

The
grandmother checked her watch. “We should be able to go back in to see Bria
now.”

Simultaneously,
six people, including those Sharla already knew were there for Bria, began
shuffling. They slid shoes back onto their feet, folded up the blankets, and
stuffed reading material back into backpacks.

Sharla
hadn’t expected to see so many people there in support of Bria, the
baby-abandoner, baby-drugger. They knew her as someone else. Bria the friend,
the sister, the granddaughter, the loved one.

Come
to think of it, Bria probably had more family support than Sharla would have
had if she’d been in ICU for several days. Besides Mark and Amani, the only
others she could count on to at least act like they cared would have been the
members of the church.

“Oh,
excuse me,” the young man said as he stepped over Sharla’s dangling foot.

“No,
you’re fine.” She glanced up at his face and caught a vision of what Amani
would surely look like in another ten years.

He
paused. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Sharla’s
heart pounded. She lowered her face, burying it in the magazine again. “No. I
don’t think so.”

“Mmm.
I’d
like
to know you.”

Thank
God, he was only flirting. “I’m married,” she muttered.

 “Happily?”

“Yes,
thank you.”

“Francis,
leave her alone! Married women are off limits,” maxi-dress-woman said, slapping
him on the arm.

“I’m
just asking,” he joked with the woman as though Sharla were suddenly invisible.

Francis…Francis…Francis!
He was one of the money-hungry uncles
who’d tried to get custody of Amani when he found out there was a small paycheck
to be had by adopting him.

The
grandmother rested her hand on Sharla’s knee as she passed by. “You’ll have to
excuse my grandson. He thinks he’s Casanova.”

With
her head down, Sharla obliged, “Yes, ma’am.”

“We
ain’t seen you here the past days. Who you here for?”

Out
of respect, Sharla answered the nosy woman. “Oh…umm…a…co-worker.”

“My
goodness. What happened to her?”

“She
had…a…stroke.”

“Yeah,
that’ll do it every time. She lucky to be alive, my mother passed after her
stroke. You reckon your co-worker gon’ pull through?”